A far cry from his chambers in the citadel, where mechanical precision had ensured every need was anticipated before he felt it. Where servants moved with perfect efficiency. Where his father's enhancements had regulated even his awareness of time, ensuring productivity never faltered beneath the weight of boredom.
In the orc territory, boredom pressed against him with relentless weight.
He'd counted the cave's stones the previous day…three hundred seventy-two visible from where he slept. He'd traced the patterns of lichen growing near the entrance, categorized the sounds of forest creatures that approached before sensing his presence and retreating. He'd tried to recall ancient vampire poetry, distorted through generations of mechanical regulation, but the words felt hollow without the precise cadence his brass components had once enforced.
So, he watched the orc settlement instead. Counting the patrols. Noting their predictable patterns. Observing how smokerose from cooking fires, how children emerged for morning training, how the entire community moved with natural rhythms that would have offended his father's sensibilities.
"Inefficient," Sebastian murmured, the word carrying none of the judgment it once would have. Just observation. Perhaps even something approaching admiration for a society that allowed itself natural variations rather than mechanically regulated precision.
His gaze followed a familiar figure moving between dwellings. Boarstaff's height and bearing were unmistakable even at a distance. The warchief's morning rounds, exactly as he'd performed them the previous day, and the day before. Sebastian could almost time the pauses, predict which dwelling he would approach next, anticipate the measured pace that carried authority without demanding it.
Sebastian's body responded subtly whenever he thought of the warchief. Whenever he remembered the taste of Boarstaff's blood, so different from the processed sustenance of the citadel. Unfiltered. Unregulated. Alive in ways that had begun altering Sebastian from the inside out.
"What am I doing here?" he asked the empty air, not for the first time. The cave offered no answers, just cool silence and perfect vantage of a world he could observe but not join.
Sebastian's fingers traced the metal at his throat, feeling how it responded differently now. No longer seamless mechanical integration, but something that shifted beneath his touch. The orcs' ancient magic was changing him, altering every artificial component his father had installed to regulate his nature. The majority of the process had finished, but small changes still surprised him. The process should have terrified him. Sometimes it did.
But mostly, it fascinated him. What would emerge when the process completed? What would remain of the noble son hisfather had engineered? What new creature might exist in that space between vampire precision and natural chaos?
His gaze drifted back to Boarstaff, now sparring with the spearmaster, Thornmaker, whose hatred burned so visibly whenever Sebastian approached. Sebastian couldn't blame him. He knew about Thornmaker's daughters, lost to vampire raids years ago.
Had Sebastian been part of the raiding party that took Thornmaker's daughters? He couldn't remember specific faces among the countless raids he'd participated in. How many of these villagers had fallen to his hands? How many families had he shattered during centuries of obedient service to his father's vision? At the time, he’d seen them all as prey, not individuals.
Sebastian's own brothers had participated in such displays, taking pride in the precision of their kills, the artistry of their warnings. He preferred to think of himself as different, as merely an observer to their cruelty. That was the lie he told himself in the quiet hours.
The truth was harder to face: he had participated. Not with the enthusiasm of his brothers, who turned border displays into competitive art, but he had been there. Had helped position bodies with mechanical precision, had followed his father's orders with the calculated efficiency expected of vampire nobility.
The memory burned in ways it never had before. Shame, foreign and suffocating, rose through systems his father's enhancements had designed specifically to prevent such "inefficiency." His changing self pulled these buried memories to the surface, forcing him to confront what he had been. What he had done.
There had been so many children over the years. Sitting there as the sun warmed his back, he remembered their faces. Small green bodies arranged with the same precision as thewarriors. The thought made him physically ill, a reaction his father's regulators would have immediately suppressed.
Sebastian pressed his forehead against warming stone, fighting memories his transformation refused to let him ignore. He had participated. Had followed orders that part of him had questioned, even then. Had committed atrocities with the same hands that now accepted blood freely given rather than violently taken.
What would Boarstaff think if he knew the extent of his participation? If he understood that the creature he fed with such steady trust had arranged orc bodies at borders with so much detachment?
The truth would remain buried. Some shames were too deep to confess, even as transformation forced Sebastian to acknowledge them to himself.
Conscience, he recognized. The capacity for it had always existed beneath his father's suppression. Not enough to refuse orders that would have resulted in his own destruction, but enough to perform them with less enthusiasm than his brothers. Enough to earn his father's constant disappointment.
Sebastian's stomach clenched with familiar hunger. The carefully measured amounts Boarstaff allowed during their feeding rituals were never enough to fully satisfy, just enough to sustain. Hunger lingered, a constant companion to isolation's boredom.
He could go to the village, he supposed. Find Boarstaff. Ask for more blood. His enhanced senses could easily track the warchief's scent, avoid the patrols, slip between buildings unseen.
But after going into the village for Sarah, he couldn't risk another boundary violation so soon. The fragile trust Boarstaff had extended would shatter if Sebastian appeared in the settlement again. Even hunger wasn't worth destroyingthat trust. Even the ache of missing Boarstaff's presence wasn't justification enough.
So, he would wait for their next scheduled feeding.
Would Boarstaff come alone again? The warchief had insisted on it after the first few feedings, dismissing the guards despite Thornmaker's objections. "If he wanted to kill me," Boarstaff had said, "he's had ample opportunity."
Trust. So foreign to Sebastian's experience that he'd needed time to recognize it. Not complete trust. Boarstaff wasn't a fool. But trusting enough to sit across from Sebastian without weapons raised, to offer his wrist without trembling, to maintain eye contact while he fed.
To touch Sebastian's face afterward, fingers lingering against skin that grew warmer with each new day.
Sebastian rose abruptly, turning away from the view that suddenly felt like torment rather than distraction. Going down the steep steps into the cave mouth, he then paced the cave's length, measured strides that echoed against stone walls. Seven steps from entrance to back wall. Seven steps that did nothing to burn the restless energy building beneath his skin.
His fingers itched for his knife, not the ceremonial weapon of a noble, but something far more personal. A simple blade carved by his younger brother Dominic, given as a gift when Sebastian had stayed with him through the hardest weeks after his modifications. Before Dominic had fully embraced their father's mechanical precision. Before artifice had replaced the connection between them.
The orcs had taken it when they captured him, along with his clothing and the few personal items he'd carried. It was the only possession he truly missed.
